Category: Legal

January 20, 2023

Ensuring your company’s safety program is set up to protect you when facing a potential OSHA fine is a challenging needle to thread. That was the message from a group of panelists highlighting “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” […]

January 19, 2023

Often earning low wages and experiencing discrimination, all while facing the ever-present threat of deportation, undocumented workers in the U.S. don’t get many wins, said Luz Castro, deputy director of national policy for Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los […]

January 18, 2023

Less than four months after citing a Trenton, New Jersey roofing contractor for exposing unprotected workers to deadly fall hazards, OSHA is once again holding the employer responsible for putting its workers’ safety at risk. As part of its Local […]

January 13, 2023

A Pennsylvania county government is suing the contractors that designed and built its jail more than 40 years ago, alleging work was never completed because a bond beam shown on plans was never placed. Officials say the construction oversight hastened […]

January 5, 2023

The law requires contractors and subs that want to win public projects to register with the Department of Labor and provide a series of disclosures about their business every two years. The goal is to ensure previous labor law and […]

December 15, 2022

The jury ultimately awarded Hrychorczuk the following payments, which were announced on Dec. 7: $15 million for pain and suffering. $1.5 million for past medical expenses. $212,000 for past lost earnings. $20 million over 21.5 years for pain and suffering. […]

December 7, 2022

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has started to provide significant funding for new and rehab infrastructure projects. A provision in the IIJA is the Build America, Buy America Act, which impacts all federally funded infrastructure projects in the United […]

November 15, 2022

The owners of four solar farms agreed to settle allegations of federal Clean Water Act violations tied to construction permits and stormwater management on projects totaling more than 500 MW in Alabama, Idaho and Illinois, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency […]

October 25, 2022

With the recurrence of racist and sexist incidents on jobsites receiving increased attention in the construction industry, contractors have developed playbooks for responding to these events. Included in those policies are site-wide stand downs to review what happened and counsel […]

October 21, 2022

A contractor working on a highway project in Rhode Island has agreed to pay $1.5 million in fines and its former project superintendent pleaded guilty to criminal charges in deals with the U.S. Attorney’s Office over improperly sourced fill that […]

October 18, 2022

Researchers and other experts expect millions of new construction jobs in coming months due to the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. That’s in addition to the 407,000 unfilled jobs in […]

October 12, 2022

The Illinois Dept. of Labor has ordered a bulk storage building contractor to pay nearly $500,000 in back pay to workers and penalties for failing to meet state-certified prevailing wage and benefit rates. The department recently reached a settlement with […]

October 7, 2022

The lawsuit is at least the fourth discrimination complaint EEOC has lodged against construction companies in recent weeks. Previously, EEOC filed against California-based contractor Goodsell/Wilkins and Florida contractors Alto Construction and J.A. Croson. The suit against Schuff alleges the hostile […]

September 29, 2022

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued a California commercial framing and drywall contractor for national origin and sexual harassment, alleging supervisors addressed Latino workers with racial slurs and threatened to sexually assault them. The EEOC’s suit against Orange County, […]

September 8, 2022

A contractor that claims a former company executive stole from it by surreptitiously altering a contract after it was signed cannot recoup its losses from its insurer, a federal judge ruled August 30. The contractor, Chesapeake, Va.-based Heartland Construction Inc., […]

August 30, 2022

On Aug. 26 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta granted a further stay of the Biden administration’s federal contractor COVID-19 vaccine mandate in seven states and also for members of the Associated Builders and Contractors of America. The […]

August 25, 2022

As legal theater, the long trial of two engineering firms for their role in the Flint, Mich., water crisis ended with a thud. A federal jury in Ann Arbor, Mich., earlier this month deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial. […]

August 22, 2022

The recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act contains highway-related provisions that aim to give a boost to infrastructure projects in disadvantaged communities and for the use of low-carbon construction materials on federal highway projects. The larger of the two provisions provides […]

August 12, 2022

The federal Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 contains more than $5 billion to incentivize the use of low-carbon building materials in public infrastructure projects and certain government-owned buildings. The sprawling $485 billion bill, which aims to fight climate change and […]

August 8, 2022

With Vice President Kamala Harris casting the decisive vote, the U.S. Senate passed 51-50 an economic package on Aug. 7 that authorizes $369 billion to address climate change. The package now moves to the U.S. House of Representatives, which is […]